Someone
recently asked me a question that I have heard repeated many times in the
past, but one that I had never personally pondered. They said to me, "Stan,
If you had only one letter of the alphabet that you could save from your
entire music collection, what letter would it be?" Lately that question has
been haunting me. What would it be? There are some great letters in the
alphabet, C, R, S, and T to name just a few. Damn, just lose the letter B
and you've lost Bowie and the Beatles, James Brown, the Birthday Party, Beck
and Bjork, and even the friggin Bonzo Dog Band. No doubt that the letter B
would be a major loss.

Ahh,
but here is the crux of the matter. This is not about losing a single
letter, it's about losing every letter except for one.

What would
you do? It might be an interesting exercise for you to mentally put yourself
into my shoes and try to feel your way through this situation. What would
you choose? Close your eyes and try to sense what this loss would mean,
while trying to awaken a sense of what really matters to you. The lone
letter paradigm is a Zen exercise that has been passed down from one rock
critic to the next since the early days of the great Lester Bangs.

Of course, in the
end, for me it all came down to the letter P. P is the Penultimate letter in
Stan Keatonís alphabet. P stands for Parliament, Pere Ubu and Prince. P is
for the fabulous Pixies, what a remarkable and under-appreciated band. P is
for Public Enemy and Public Image. And foremost, P is for the Godfather of
Punk, Iggy Pop, and his incredible band The Stooges.